Actually, after re-reading your new post, you probably just have a weirdness in XP that could be recovered by installing your original XP disk and doing a repair on it. I'd still pull it and save all your files first, just in case something went wrong with restoring your original. If it allows you into recovery mode, you might try doing a restore on it also...
...BUT... a big heads up to everyone with a computer or a smart phone, and a willingness to listen and learn......if you don't wanna lose yer #$%*, keep it backed up in several places including burning your music and pics and important documents to a cd or dvd...multiple backups!!!! in multiple locations!!! If you don't back it up, there's a probably 90 precent chance you will lose it and there is never a convenient time to lose everything. Every day I get calls from people with iphones (doctors with many years worth of records and calendar info, or lawyers involved in cases, or people with contract info and thousands of business contacts all over the world or who knows what..people who are otherwise very intelligent and successful)...something happened and...(them) " I lost EVERYTHING on my phone".. (me) "Have you done a backup on it recently"... (them) "No, I got an iphone so I wouldn't have to have a computer.." or "I've had it 3 years and never plugged it into my computer" WROOOONG!!!!!... or..... (them) "the hard drive on my computer went out so I had it replaced and when I plugged in my phone, it wiped everything off my phone" (me) "did you have the info on your computer backed up?" "no.." "well, I'm truly empathetic about your situation, and I really hate to tell you this, but yer #$%*s in the wind..." you can buy a terabyte external hard drive for about $100 these days, that's 1000 Gigs, more than enough room to keep most peoples stuff on, there's no reason anyone should be losing data.
